Drinking Water News: Next Steps For Toledo Residents, An Updated Timeline For Global Water Shortages, Potential Solutions To The China Water Crisis and Texas Wastewater Becomes Texas Tap Water

by admin on August 6, 2014

This past weekend was an unpleasant one in Toledo, Ohio as a drinking water ban impacted the lives of nearly 400,000 residents. Caused by an algae bloom in Lake Erie, this is one of the larger recent drinking water bans this country has experienced, and comes relatively hot on the heels of January’s MCHM contamination incident in West Virginia.

In the video above and corresponding article, you’ll see the next steps you should take if you are a resident of Ohio, or any region dealing with a future drinking water ban. You will also hear from Toledo’s Director of Public Utilities Ed Moore, who urges residents to conserve water in these early recovery stages, and mayor Michael Collins who hopes the scale of this incident helps ‘take the politics out of it’ when it comes to passing regulation designed to protect our resources.

In Other Drinking Water News:

Algae Blooms In Lake Erie Nothing New
While this weekend’s drinking water ban in Toledo led to a significant amount of coverage related to algae blooms in Lake Erie, the phenomenon is unfortunately nothing new. In the article above, John Seewer of The Associated Press shares how decades of farm runoff and sludge from sewage treatment plants combined with just the right type of weather conditions made this past weekend’s incident – sadly – almost inevitable. Read on in his article to learn more about the steps that can be taken to prevent a recurrence in the future.

Global Water Shortage By 2040 A Distinct Possibility
New research by the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) has resulted in a rather frightening conclusion: at today’s pace of usage, there will not be enough water to hydrate the world’s population while keeping current energy and power solutions operating. “This means that we’ll have to decide where we spend our water in the future. Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going or as drinking water? We don’t have enough water to do both,” says Professor Benjamin Sovacool, one of the researchers involved in the study. Fortunately, this study also included recommendations for improving our situation, which you can read in the article above.

For more solutions addressing our global water crisis, we also invite you to read these posts from Mona Dai, Steve Hanson and Jason Miller – the winner and two runners-up for last year’s Future of Water Scholarship Program, offered by WaterFilters.NET.

Potential Solution For China’s Drinking Water Crisis
While the story above discusses the possibility of a global water shortage by 2040, many experts predict that this type of water crisis will hit China ten years earlier. Thankfully, there are those out there dedicated to finding a solution. In an article published by Nature, writers Tao Tao and Kunlun Xin suggest that rather than investing in an approach focused on infrastructure (a plan China is ill suited to complete) the government should focus on cleaning water sources and recycling water, while residents should invest in low cost carbon water filters and purifiers. Learn more about these interesting, and hopefully impactful, approaches to address China’s water crisis in the post above.

Archer Daniels Midland Settles Over Clean Water Act Violations
In the mid-90s, global food processing company Archer Daniels Midland was caught in price fixing scandal that led to jail sentences for several executives. (The incident was famously skewered in the film The Informant, starring actor and Water.org co-founder Matt Damon.) Earlier this week, the company found itself at odds with lawmakers again, this time for violating the Clean Water Act. In settling the case, brought about by a lack of ‘worst case scenario’ contingency planning related to its storing of oil and chemicals, the company will be assessed a massive financial penalty. Learn more of the details behind this story in the release above.

Texas Wastewater Becomes Texas Tap Water
In a man-made wetland between Dallas and Houston, Texas, lush vegetation filters phosphorous and nitrates out of water, before returning it in a cleaner state into the region’s drinking supply. In the article above, learn how these wetlands can filter up to 65,000 gallons per day at only a fraction of the cost of traditional water filtration infrastructures.

Footwear & Outdoor Companies Partner With High School Students on Water Purification Project
Freewaters Footwear and Cascade Designs have launched a pilot program with students at Channel Islands High School in California. As part of the project, students have been embarking on a lesson plan that finds them experimenting with a portable SE200 Electrochlorinator, inspiring them to make both a design and business case for the development of their own unique water purification units. Read more about this initiative in the article above from Shop-Eat-Surf. After reading the article above, check out last year’s interview with Surfrider Foundation San Diego’s chapter coordinator Haley Jain Haggerstone, as she shares more on how surf culture is helping improve water quality throughout the world.

WaterFilters.NET In The News:

KSTP-TV & Rick Kupchella’s Bring Me The News Cover WaterFilters.NET Relief Efforts In Ohio
When our West Virginia customers were impacted by an MCHM chemical spill in January, we sent our customers a free refrigerator water filter from our Tier1 line, in an effort to bring some normalcy back into their lives. We were happy to be able to repeat this initiative for our customers in Toledo, Ohio this week who were among the 400,000 impacted by the weekend-long drinking water ban. Thanks to both Jennie Olson of KSTP-TV and Melissa Turtinen of Rick Kupchella’s Bring Me The News for helping us to share more on these efforts!

Water Filtration Product of the Week: ZeroWater Filters

In the most literal sense, no water filter that we sell – or that anyone sells – will completely ‘remove’ contaminants from your water. Even if the filters reduce 99.999999%, the language is always that the filters ‘reduce.’ That said, ZeroWater filters come awfully close to being able to claim rightful use of the word ‘remove.’

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